


Of Piggybacks and Perfection

by Estrella3791



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Messy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24166486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estrella3791/pseuds/Estrella3791
Summary: The gang is in high school, piggyback rides are Elizabeth's preferred mode of transportation, and Jack Sparrow is a Good Bro.
Relationships: Elizabeth Swann/Will Turner
Comments: 3
Kudos: 42





	Of Piggybacks and Perfection

**Author's Note:**

> Here, have some of this mess. It was written in one sitting, courtesy of quarantine, and is very, painfully unedited, but I kinda like it anyway. Maybe at some point I'll come back and spruce it up, but for now I'm going to throw it at you lovely people because I've been craving comments. No pressure. ;) 
> 
> Love to you all! I hope that you are doing okay with all of this craziness that is coronavirus. Thank you for clicking on my silly little story! I hope you enjoy it.

No one at Port Royal High knows when, exactly, Elizabeth Swann started using William Turner’s back as her primary mode of transport. Not even Elizabeth herself is sure. It just sort of happened.

William – his friends call him Will – has some vague recollections. He has a fuzzy outline of a football game, Elizabeth screaming “Go, Pirates!” until her voice was hoarse. He remembers them winning, and jumping up to cheer, and a sudden weight on his back and long legs wrapping around his waist and soft arms slipping around his neck. He remembers his mouth going very dry, and he remembers carrying her all the way back to her car. That was the evening his friend (although sometimes he questions whether the word really applies to Jack) convinced him to sample the flask that Gibbs, the school janitor, always carries around, because the lines of professionalism are not very sharply drawn at Port Royal. This sampling is probably the reason Will’s memories of the event are blurred, because he’s pretty sure that in any other situation, one in which he had control of his senses, he would have remembered every detail.

You see, Will has been in love with Elizabeth since they were twelve.

Everybody knows it. Even Elizabeth has a vague inkling. But her father is the principal and he has his eye set on James Norrington as the ideal boyfriend for his daughter. This is ridiculous, because it isn’t the eighteenth century and parents don’t get to control their children’s love lives anymore, but Will is too respectful for his own good and doesn’t want to get on Principal Swann’s bad side. And, of course, he has a sense of self-preservation. Due to the aforementioned lack of professionalism at Port Royal High, there is a good chance that if Will were to displease the Principal by dating his daughter, Swann would make his life a living hell. 

So Will waits and watches and pines for Elizabeth until everyone has to admire him, even as they roll their eyes.

One day, things change.

As has been said, Elizabeth vastly prefers jumping on Will’s back to walking places herself. Since Will doesn’t seem to mind, she doesn’t even try to show a little decorum. He can be anywhere – standing up from his desk, walking down the halls, shoving something in his locker – and she’ll spring from behind, wrap herself around him until he couldn’t peel her off even if he wanted to, and get a free ride to wherever Will happens to be going. He’ll even take requests, if she phrases them nicely. It’s a good system, one they both enjoy using very much (although neither would tell the other), and it has been going on for so long that the school has mostly accepted that this is the way the world works now. Even Principal Swann seems to have resigned himself to it, although he does shoot Will glares when Elizabeth isn’t looking, sometimes.

This balance in the force is drastically upset one day when Jack Sparrow pulls Elizabeth aside. No one knows what he says to her, but whatever it is, she stops jumping onto Will’s back. As a matter of fact, she stops talking to Will at all. This is very confusing for everybody at Port Royal, because Will and Elizabeth have been best friends since kindergarten. Will is mildly devastated by this development, because although being in love with someone and unable to tell them is a miserable experience, it’s even worse when you can’t talk to that someone at all. He tries to find out from Jack what went down, but Jack only clamps his mouth shut and winks, which is maddeningly unhelpful.

Will is not about to press Elizabeth for details, because he has a sickening feeling that he knows exactly what’s going on. He elects instead to focus on his schoolwork, even if he already knows that he wants to be a welder and so there’s no real reason for him to strive for perfect grades. He asks his foster mom to teach him how to cook, and she looks at him strangely but doesn’t complain. He and Barbossa go on runs together, because even though he doesn’t like Barbossa very much, the guy has always been supportive of his ill-fated crush on Elizabeth, and right now Will needs support. 

Will is generally trying to move on and forget about it, but it’s not really working, so when his phone rings and it’s Elizabeth of course he picks it up.

“Hi,” he says. Short and to the point, and ambiguous enough that she’s going to have to press if she wants to find out how he’s feeling.

“Will,” she says, and there are tears in her voice and Will has never been able to remain apathetic when Elizabeth is crying. “Would you – could you – can you pick me up?”

“Of course,” he says, already pulling his shoes on. “Where are you?”

She tells him where she is – in some random neighborhood that she has no good reason to be in, and will can’t help but wonder why she’s there – and he floors it to get to her. She’s sitting on the curb, arms wrapped around herself, eyes red, and Will could just roll down the window and tell her to get in but he’s never been good at being heartless.

He gets out of the car and takes a step towards her, holding his arms out hesitantly, and she flies into them, burying her face in his chest and soothing the ache that he’s been feeling there lately. He doesn’t say anything; just strokes her hair in the way she finds reassuring, and very forcefully keeps himself from saying anything like ‘shh.’ Elizabeth does not take well to being told to keep quiet. Once she’s cried herself out, she pulls back and dashes a hand across her eyes.

“Sorry,” she says, her voice rough and small and not at all like Elizabeth.

“Don’t be,” Will says, and then, “Milkshakes?”

That gets a smile, and she slides into his passenger seat looking a little more like herself. 

Once they’re parked in a private corner of the Tortuga parking lot, milkshakes in hand, Elizabeth settles back into her seat and heaves a sigh.

“I probably should tell you what’s been going on,” she says.

“I would like that,” Will says, and he sounds a little stiff but it’s better than angry, which is what he’s suddenly feeling. After all this time of just wishing for things to go back to the way they were, he’s finding that he’d actually very much like an apology before that happens, or some sort of acknowledgment of the hurt she’s caused him.

“Well,” Elizabeth says, “it started with Jack.”

Of course it did, Will thinks bitterly.

“He wasn’t trying to do this,” she says quickly, reading his face. “He wasn’t trying to push the two of us apart.”

And that stills Will’s angry thoughts, because he didn’t see that coming. Maybe he won’t go beat Jack up on Monday, after all.

“He told me that I wasn’t being fair to you, because you’ve been in love with me all this time and I knew it and I was acting like we were together and making it hard for you because I wanted you to make a move and I was too scared to do it myself.”

Oh. Will didn’t see that coming, either. 

“He was right,” Elizabeth whispers, brown eyes impossibly soft as she looks at him. “He was right, Will.”

And that officially sends Will’s train of thought spiraling off the tracks, and he finds himself unable to do anything except gape at her like an idiot.

“I stopped talking to you because I was mad,” she says, sitting back again and breaking the tension. Will finds that he can breathe again. “I was mad because Jack was right and I didn’t want Jack to be right, and it’s taken me until tonight, at Tia Dalma’s house, to realize it. I’m sorry, Will.”

And there it is, there’s the apology he wanted, and Will finds that he actually wants it less, now. He doesn’t care about why she was at Dalma’s house. He doesn’t care that until very recently his heart had been pretty violently broken and it was her fault. He finds that now that he knows she loves him back he couldn’t care less about the ways she’s wronged him. 

“I love you,” he blurts, and the words surprise him as much as her. “I really, truly do, Elizabeth.”

She smiles, and her teeth are white and bright and happy, and Will feels something warm bubble up inside of him. 

“I’d really like to kiss you,” he tells her, and even as he says it he feels nervous, because there’s always a chance that she’ll say no, that it’s too fast, that she’ll be offended and jump out of the car and have her father expel him.

She doesn’t, of course. She leans in and her eyes flutter shut and Will’s heart hammers in his chest and he brushes his lips against hers, lightly, gently, and she’s soft and smells like alcohol and sweat and tears and he breathes it in because it’s her. She gets impatient and surges forward, kissing him forcefully, using teeth and tongue, and even though it makes it clumsy he can’t stop smiling because it’s her, it’s his Elizabeth, and she’s kissing him and his hands are in her hair and hers are clasped behind his neck and he loves her and she loves him and he thinks that right here, right now, everything is perfect.


End file.
